I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker today, and despite its flaws quite enjoyed the film. One aspect specifically caught my attention, namely the multiple meanings held by both the title of the film and the quotation (“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”) with which it begins.

If you think about it, quite a number of meanings can be derived from these two in relation to the story.

War as an addictive drug
A straightforward interpretation of the quote from the opening titles is that war is addictive: both for the soldiers partaking in it (Sergeant James being the prime example) but also for the nation waging a war (in both psychological and economical terms).

War as a healing drug
However, if you take the phrase “war is a drug” entirely out of any context and consider it alone, as the opening titles in fact do, another potential meaning surfaces in which the military action stands for a medical drug used to cure a specific geopolitical ailment. The troops are there to kill a virus or a bacterial infection. In the case of the Bravo Company this specifically means dismantling explosives so that normality may one day return. As with any medicine, the injection causes the system (in this case Iraq) to go haywire, but it is a faster and often safer method than attempting to correct the problem with time and rest.

Hurt locker as a place of pain
The title, I learn from a slang dictionary, literally refers to a time or place of pain. In the film’s context this is Iraq, where the soldiers serve in active duty, counting down the days until the end of their rotation.

The Middle East as the hurt locker
In a similar vein, the on-going war(s) in the Middle East can be said to “lock in the hurt” by keeping the conflict more or less bound within specific geographical areas so that it does not take place for instance in the US or Europe. In this context, the military is the hurt locker, as it confines the spread of the conflict.

Soldiers locking in their hurt
The soldiers at the centre of the film may be tough, but as the film so well depicts, behind their stone-faced exterior we get glimpses of something else — the hurt and confusion that they feel inside. Specialist Eldridge is the most apparent example of someone locking in his hurt, but the film also offers scenes for both Sergeant James and Sergeant Sanborn to let their hurt pour out (a shower scene and a car scene, respectively).

Sergeant James as the hurt locker
James “locks in the hurt” by dismantling bombs and therefore making it impossible for them to go off. As a result, the potential hurt stays safely inside.

Sergeant James as the hurt locker #2
It may also make sense to think of James as a locker (“someone who locks something”, see above) who has in some manner been irredeemably hurt by the war, and who as a result now cannot function outside of the conflict.

The bombsuit as locking out the hurt
James locks himself into the bombsuit, which in turn helps to lock out the force and hurt released by a bomb. The armoured vehicle and the strongly fortified base from which the Bravo Company operates function similarly, isolated (for the sake of security) from the country and people around them. They keep out the hurt, but prevent any meaningful interaction with the Iraqis.

Reference to the ending
The only bomb that James is unable to fix in the film is the one worn by the suicide bomber who has come to have second thoughts. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that his bombs are secured on his body by strong padlocks.

Have our deeds awoken a monster?

Wise Bread has an interesting report about how you can reset your sleep cycle if you really need to. The trick has to do with the fact that in addition to monitoring our exposure to light, our internal clock also monitors our hunger levels. Supposedly, then, if you fast for 12-16 hours and then eat something, your clock will adjust itself as if it now was the start of a new day.

This should be handy for those who travel between time zones. I wonder, though, whether this works for people who never have breakfasts.

Just a heads-up — get yourself Maxwell’s new album, BLACKsummers’night. It’s the first in a trilogy, and a damn fine start it is, too.

Don’t believe the poor reviews, Watch Coppola’s Youth Without Youth. It isn’t the greatest movie of all time, but as a cinematic meditation on time, reality and consciousness, it works really well. It is also a fairly beautiful story.

It’s actually a bit like David Lynch, but without the surrealism.

I watched Frost/Nixon yesterday, and followed it with some light research on the film’s historical accuracy. As suspected, quite a bit was invented, rearranged and reinterpreted.

There is one particular topic which jumps out over and over again in the general discussion of the film’s relationship with historical reality: Nixon’s late night phone call to Frost. The question repeatedly asked is whether this phone call really took place. The answer, unsurprisingly, is “no” (see for instance here, here and here).

Now, my research hasn’t been that extensive, but I am surprised that I haven’t seen anyone asking whether the phone call actually took place in the film’s own reality. And I would suggest that it in fact didn’t.

The call is preceded by Caroline about to go down to the hotel’s restaurant to get Frost and herself something to eat. She asks Frost whether he would like fish or a steak, but Frost being in a highly emotional state, she decides that she’ll call him from the restaurant instead.

When the phone finally rings, Frost has made up his mind: it will be neither fish nor steak, but cheeseburgers, and this is what he says into the receiver. However, instead of hearing Caroline’s voice, he gets a rambling Nixon.

After the Nixon call is over, Caroline enters the hotel room bringing cheeseburgers. There are two things to note here. One is that we have not actually been shown Frost telling Caroline that he wants cheeseburgers and not steak or fish, yet she somehow knows that it is cheeseburgers that Frost wants. Even more interestingly, Caroline does not mention that the phone line was busy when she tried to call from the restaurant, which should have been the case had the Nixon call actually taken place.

The way I therefore see it is that it was actually Caroline who called, and Frost due to his exhaustion or desperation or whatever imagined the whole Nixon thing. This also explains why Nixon cannot remember the phone call — it didn’t take place.

This would also make sense considering the way the scene is set up, with Caroline’s coming and going, and the careful references to steaks, fish and cheeseburgers. Her trip to the restaurant would otherwise seem narratively unnecessary, but now it has a clear function. It also explains why at the very end we as the audience are reminded about not only the phone call and the fact that Nixon cannot remember it, but also specifically about the cheeseburgers.

If you interpret the scene in this way, and I don’t say that you absolutely have to, you can perhaps take it as a reference to subjective interpretation of history, and as such see it as the film’s commentary on itself.